I glanced at the manitou and saw the system had credited me with a million and a half for these fifteen minutes. Apparently our sommeliers had found a lot of what I’d shot extremely useful. If I earned that much for every flight, I could buy an external villa in the lower hemisphere, I thought. I could repay the loan for Kaya in just three more years …

  Bernard-Henri was still standing on the side of the road, obviously still struggling to gather his wits after his M-vitamins. I called his trailer and decided to wait until he got into it – after all, he was my responsibility until the operation was over. I didn’t bother to lay into him, because everything had turned out fine in the end, and the military tradition in cases like that is to leave the contentious post-flight debriefing for later.

  But then he decided to speak to me himself.

  ‘Where’s the little slut?’ he asked in a hoarse voice.

  ‘How should I know?’ I answered. ‘I didn’t watch where she went.’

  ‘I hadn’t got finished with her,’ he said.

  That was just too much – because I knew exactly what he really meant.

  ‘I just almost killed the Kagan because of you, you cretin,’ I roared. ‘And I’m supposed to look out for your little bitches?’

  ‘Who do you think you’re talking to, you flying lard-arse?’ he roared back. ‘I’m Bernard-Henri Montaigne Montesquieu! And a cretin was your papà for not coming on the floor …’

  And that set us off – before his garbage bucket arrived, we were able to say what we thought of each other a dozen times. Then he went off to look for the girl, and soon informed me that she’d shown up, she’d been hiding in the forest. He loaded her into the trailer and took her off to the Green Zone – an old, tried and tested routine of his. But this time his girlfriend had a chance of living longer than usual – Bernard-Henri had contracted to rebuild the post-war world and could get stuck down there for a long time.

  Now I was perfectly justified in putting the camera on autopilot and park. The camera set off back home, and I was free.

  The moment I clambered down off my combat cushions and took off my glasses, Kaya looked up at me and said,

  ‘You butcher.’

  At this stage I’d forgotten that I sat her at the control manitou to follow the flight – because I hadn’t been planning any shooting. Who could have known everything would turn out like that? And of course, my girl had seen plenty of bad stuff.

  ‘Flying lard-arse,’ Kaya continued in a spiteful voice. ‘What did you kill all those people for? I feel sorry for them. You fat brute. Bloodthirsty moron. I’m never going to watch you fly again. Do you hear me? Never!’

  That hurt my feelings, because I really am on the stout side. Bernard-Henri always hits below the belt. And so does Kaya.

  Anyone who mocks another person for being overweight must be a mental lightweight, as well as a physical one. So how could they understand that Manitou only allows his elect to put on a solid middle-aged spread? It’s no accident that a fat man laughing has been the symbol of riches since time immemorial.

  Your mass is your presence in the universe. If there’s a hundred and fifty kilos of you, the life included in you is enough for two average citizens. So it’s hardly any wonder if you’re smarter than the average individual or superior to everyone else in one area or another. Of course, fat people aren’t always geniuses, but generally speaking they’re interesting, amiable and extremely useful members of society. I’m a good pilot precisely because when I’m controlling my Hannelore, I rely on my instincts – that is, I fly with my gut. With all of it.

  It’s true, of course, that for engineering reasons most of the pilots of ancient times were small and thin, but even here I can point to famous aces like Herman Göring and Benito Mussolini. And it’s no coincidence that they were both distinguished statesmen too. But Kaya couldn’t give a damn about all that.

  By the way, I’ve noticed something interesting. When she calls me fat, I don’t get offended, I’m used to it.

  When she calls me an imbecile, all I do is laugh. But when she calls me an imbecile and fat at the same time, I feel hurt and resentful. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

  But I’ve only got myself to blame. I was the one who set her bitchiness to maximum; no one forced me to do it.

  That’s one of the settings in her ‘red list’. I’ve got ‘bitchiness’, ‘seduction’ and ‘spirituality’ all set to maximum simultaneously. But I’ll tell you what that means a little bit later.

  Anyway, I took offence and went to the happiness room – the manitou from which Kaya is controlled is in there. I entered the password and put her on pause.

  The reason I adjust her settings from this place isn’t because it holds some sort of cesspit symbolism for me – it’s just that Kaya never needs to use it. There’s less risk of her ever getting her own hands on the control system. But I feel it’s time for me to clarify a few points here.

  Kaya is the sweet blossom of my life, my main investment, the light of my heart, the happiness of my nights and many, many years of loan payments still to come.

  Kaya is my sura.

  Let me explain immediately that in my sexual orientation I’m a hundred per cent gloomy. A gloomo, gloomball, doll-shagger, pupophile – call me whatever you like. If you’re a pupophobe and you have prejudices about all this, that’s your problem, but there’s no way you’re going to make it mine. We fought for our rights for centuries – and the result is that nowadays the word ‘gloomy’ occupies a place of honour beside the word ‘gay’, with only a comma to separate them. But that’s the politically correct term, we call ourselves pupos.

  In case you don’t happen to know, ‘pupo’ (from ‘pupophile’) is a formerly insulting term for gloomy people, derived from the Old Latin ‘pupa’, meaning ‘doll’. We took it over – in exactly the same way as gays once transformed the insulting name ‘queer’ into their own term of ironic self-identification. On Big Byz it’s an eminently respectable expression. Nowadays only the Orks use ‘pupo’ as an insult, and they confuse it with ‘pedo’. But for them these terms don’t necessarily indicate sexual orientation, more often they signify a person who flouts the accepted moral norms (although what those might be for the Orks is another story altogether).

  Of course, I’ve got nothing against biological partners, I’ve even tried them a few times in my life. But it’s simply not for me. My choice is a sura.

  I absolutely love the word itself. It sounds to me like the name of a song, or a prayer, or some bird with bright, paradisiacal plumage. But it’s simply an abbreviation of the Church English ‘surrogate wife’ that has come down to us from the times when pupophiles could still be subjected to public humiliation. Only I’m not sure it’s correct to call suras surrogate women (especially ‘rubber women’, as we sometimes call them in our slang).

  In fact, in these times it’s the live women who are more like surrogates. Especially since the age of consent was raised to forty-six. And for them the term ‘rubber women’ is entirely appropriate – with all the implants they get done almost everywhere now.

  The most significant thing the cinemafia and venerable feminists have been doing since they seized power in our aging society is to raise the age of consent. Now they’re planning to take it up to forty-eight. For gays and lesbians the age of consent is forty-four at present, because they have a powerful lobby, and they won an amendment through affirmative action – but the plan is to raise them to forty-six too. If it wasn’t for GULAG (and I’ve been a member of that movement for nine years now), the age of consent would have been increased directly to sixty.

  Our association is essentially the final anchor point for the remnants of freedom and common sense in society. But I’ll tell you about GULAG some time later – it’s a long story. For now let me simply remark that it’s the only genuine social force capable, if necessary, of opposing both the state and CINEWS Inc. – what’s known as ‘grassroots power’. And the battle lines, ha ha, run straight through my heart.

  Actually, of course, things aren’t all that bad – the strict prohibition doesn’t apply to sex, only to filming it. As far as sex itself is concerned, the juvenile rule ‘don’t look – don’t see’ applies. But it’s only high-flyers like Bernard-Henri who can derive practical benefit from this on a daily basis.

  The cynics claim that the venerable feminists raise the age of consent in the hope that someone will be seduced by their own over-mature charms. That’s nonsense, of course. The attempt to deprive others of their sexual rights is an extreme form of sexual self-expression, something like sex with an old shoe or anal exhibitionism. Just take a look at the faces of the champions of the cause, and you’ll get the full picture. Of course, it’s cruel to deny them the right to realise their sexual fantasies, but the problem is that the egotistical actions of a single aggressive sex-minority create a problem for a huge number of people.

  But it’s not even a matter of these hysterical women – they’re just a blind in all this. Their exclusive function is as talking heads, but the work is directed and financed by completely different forces.

  The powers that be raise the age of consent in response to constant pressure from the movie industry, which lobbies furiously on this question. Admittedly, the cinemafia’s efforts to raise the age of consent also meet with a positive response from society, because they’re in line with its hypocritical morality. The contrite gerontocrats think they can win Manitou’s good favour by sacrificing other people’s joy to Him. But we don’t delight Manitou with these gifts. We merely insult Him.

  When we, the free people of the new age, go to the temple on Sunday to watch a fresh snuff, we come face to face with the boundless hypocrisy that pervades our morality. Convex, 3D, full-colour hypocrisy.

  No, our offering isn’t totally mendacious. We pilots are pure in the eyes of Manitou: the death in the snuffs is entirely honest. But the love that we offer to His pure rays of light is phony through and through. And when Manitou punishes us – and it will happen sooner or later – the beneficiaries of this sacrilege will find no salvation in their bank accounts or their treasure hoards.

  It all looks perfectly decent and proper. The actors don’t provoke disgust, their bodies are still beautiful (although with a rather overripe, glossy kind of beauty), their movements are meticulously choreographed, the general presentation is flawless. But even though plastic surgery has scaled unprecedented heights in our times, nature is not easily deceived.

  As far as the men go, it’s not so bad. After all, the male sex is fairly ugly by its very nature – instead of beauty, as they say, it has testosterone and money. But the actresses …

  For instance, there in front of you is a girl with little blond plaits, sitting on a bed, holding a teddy bear, and you believe that what you’re seeing is the tender dawn of youth – and then a faint pterodactyl-like crease suddenly twinkles briefly on the neck of this creature, patched together out of scraps of herself, and you immediately realise that she’s an old woman, and the surge of warmth in your lower belly is replaced by a shudder of revulsion that runs through your entire body.

  A woman is a magical flower, a mere glance at which should be enough to derange your mind, inspiring you to endure the trials and tribulations of procreation. That’s how Manitou wanted it to be.

  And then on Sunday you arrive at the temple, but instead of a flower, they show you a pair of high-budget breasts, inflated with implants, which by all the laws of nature should have disintegrated into silicone and proteins half a century ago. Then they apologise for all the other petals still being swathed in bandages, and they expect you to respond with an ardent bacchanalian frenzy of love for life.

  The main point here is that everyone knows there are some genuinely beautiful young people among the male and female ‘disciples’ of this caste of actors accursed by Manitou. Well, not just beautiful – very beautiful. And everyone realises that they’d look a lot better than the old guard on the temple celluloid.

  And that’s exactly why the age of consent has been hiked up to forty-six. Porn actors are extremely rich, because the rate paid for temple film work is incredibly high. It’s no exaggeration to describe these people as a powerful mafia with a mighty political lobby and extensive social support – owing to the fact that the average age of the inhabitants of Big Byz is fairly advanced. Everyone in the cinemafia understands each other implicitly, and the last thing they want to see is young competition emerging.

  In an open information society no one can criminalise filming. But with powerful lobbying it’s perfectly possible to criminalise what’s filmed. This won’t have much impact on citizens’ lives because of the ‘don’t look – don’t see’ rule, but it will immediately make it impossible to shoot temple porn with young actors – as a self-evident, documentable breach of the law.

  That’s the paradox of it.

  Therefore young actors – meaning those who are more than twenty or thirty years old – have to remain disciples for decades, which means they simply grow into this mafia. But the parts in temple porn are played by old men and women who are fifty, sometimes even seventy years old. If they were filmed on digital, all the problems could be solved by processing the material on a manitou. But you can’t do it that way with temple celluloid, because snuff’s a sacred mystery. That’s why I say our offering is impure. Yet our society finds it too painful to discuss subjects like these. There are things that are just not talked about. And this is one of them.

  Fortunately, gloomy people’s lives are entirely unaffected by the age of consent, because it only applies to what happens between two or more humans. But we use suras, and with them no legal problems like ‘consent’ ever arise – in this case no consent is required, either from the sura or from the man engaging in intimate contact with her. It’s forbidden to film suras in snuffs (they can’t be party to a religious ritual) or in porn (they ‘imitate individuals who have not attained the age of consent’). But if you use a sura at home, you won’t have any problems. That is, of course, until you start sharing video clips of your conquests on the personal front: that kind of thing happens every year, and the unfortunate dopes are immediately sacrificed on the altar of public morality, to strident jeering from the grey-haired feminists.

  Suras can be very different – from the rubber dolls filled with red dye used by sadistic deviants and Orkish Kagans (for Torn Durex, mind you, they’re just a status symbol) to such absolute miracles as my Kaya: a ‘self-maintaining, biosynthetic, premium-1 class machine’, as the manual proudly calls her.

  As I’ve already said, my camera might not be the best there is on the market. But Kaya is the very best. And I don’t think there’ll ever be anything more perfect. All the innumerable ancient technologies that animate and motivate her little body can only be imitated and replicated now – there’s not much chance that anyone will ever be able to improve on her. Especially since there’s no particular need for it.

  A top of the line model like my Kaya is an indulgence that very few inhabitants of our crowded little world can afford.

  What she has inside her, I don’t know.

  That is, of course, within certain limits I do know, and very well, but I don’t wish to descend into vulgarity. What I mean to say is that I don’t have any clear idea of how all her electronic and mechanical insides work. I don’t even really know what it all looks like, although I do have a vague inkling – several years ago a crazy lunatic sawed a sura of the same class into pieces, and by pure chance a few photos ended up in my manitou.

  That young guy, I believe, was a member of the Film Burners sect. They said on the news that he wanted to take out his girl’s atomic battery and make a bomb out of it, or something of the kind, but that’s nonsense. Because the battery’s entirely safe and shuts itself down automatically at the slightest attempt to gain unsanctioned access. It’s the green atom, the same principle as in all the ancient machines. It produces no pollution under any conditions and it’s extremely expensive – not even my Hannelore has a battery like that. Critical technology – it’s not installed on combat equipment that could fall into enemy hands.

  Sheer idiocy, of course. Firstly, a sura could defect to the surface – in theory, at least. Secondly, if the enemy did pluck the battery out of a broken camera, he still wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. The whole business is just a conspiracy between the makers of the cameras, who don’t want to step up another level on the spiral of competition. That’s why a Hannelore has to be recharged every now and then, but Kaya doesn’t. Atomic batteries last for centuries, and a sura always outlives her owner. So I can understand that young guy.

  I don’t know how that atomic battery and all the synthetic biology inside her body work. I only know that externally her body’s indistinguishable from a youthful, ideally healthy and freshly washed human being. She even has a biofield simulator.

  In physical terms she’s hardly superior to us at all – she can’t run too fast or perform all sorts of acrobatic tricks (although I should mention regretfully that she can give this fat individual a hundred points start in that department too). She’s a domestic creature, designed primarily for moving calmly round one’s home. But she can walk, gesticulate and perform any minor household task as well as a human being.

  She breathes – or rather, she goes through the motions. Air constantly enters her body and leaves it, and she speaks exactly the same way we do.

  There’s almost nothing she needs, not even repairs – if you damage her delicate skin, the wound soon heals over on its own. The instructions tell you not to give her anything but water and two or three maintenance pills a year (these are little plastic spheres that look like vitamins). She can also swallow them in much greater quantities, if you want her, for instance, to grow her hair long or put on a bit of weight.